I'm no towel expert but I'm sure there will be one along soon to advise you. It may be a tension issue as you have suggested but I also wonder if you had used a wash-away over the embroidered area prior to machining? Sorry that I cannot be of any more help.

Don't know if I'm any help, but. Did you wash the towel before embroidering on it? Did you use WSS topper on the fluffy side? What kind of stablizer on the back? Prewash, WSS topper & I use tear away stablizer, but cut away is also good.

When I embroidered towels I have successfully used tight meshed tulle instead of WSS as a topper.

Could be the design you are using is too dense. You may need to double the stabilizer top and bottom also. A while back I had problems with letters on a T-shirt so I used foam under it, you may also want to talk to the digitizer also. Good luck!

I think you may have under stabilized as the top and bottom should be equal even if it was a digitizing problem. I always press (not iron) the nap of my towels down in whatever direction the loop is lying (top and bottom). For this much embroidery, I would have used a tear away underneath that I hooped with the towel. I would also have put the WSS on top as you did, but then, I would have floated another piece of tear away underneath.

I agree that it is probably a stabilizing problem. You may have to experiment a little to get the right combination for the look you want. I try to just use wss stabilizers too, but if the design is as dense as yours looks to be, it needs a little heavier stabilization. When I have this problem, I use a leave-in tearaway on the back. On the top I put a layer of tulle and a layer of wss on top of it. The tulle will just tear away after you stitch it and keeps the pokies from popping up. This gives me better stabilization without being to heavy.